GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 10 - Sept 2009

“We’re already seeing a significant uptake in search value for Bodog.com, and while it’s difficult to quantify, the impact that this has had on staff morale has been pretty remarkable. And affiliates have been calling every day.” – Alwyn Morris brand?Ordidyouknow for certain that licensing the Bodog brand was clearly the way to go? I was abso- lutely considering develop- ing a stand-alone brand. But, while I was confident that the Group coulddeliver technical- lyand fromacustomer service pointof view, buildingabrand from zero is both a time-con- sumingand– ifyou’regoing to really do it right – an insanely expensive proposition. Calvin and his team at the time had donesuchapowerful jobofde- finingand embodyingBodog’s brand values – this irrever- ent, rogue-like, entertainment brand – that the opportunity to license that kind of aware- nesswas, essentially, aonce in a lifetimeopportunity. It didn’t takeme long tomake thedecision. The Bodog brand touches so many different spaces – online casinos, online poker,music,mixedmartial arts –what isMMGG’s role in all of these operations? Tobeclear–ourbrand license agreementonlygivesusaccess tothebrand foronlinegaming, and only in our territory. We don’t haveanything todowith the deals to license the brand forBodogFight orBodogMusic or any of the other things they’re working on. So, onlinegaming isallwedo. We manage the product development, maintain the infrastructure, runcustomer service, marketing, and so on. We get access to some suppliers that service BodogEurope aswell that will, I assume, alsoserviceBodogAsia,butwe’rerunning the operation and ultimately supplier selection is our decision tomake, subject to certain limited restrictions in our brand licensedeal. I suppose the simplest way to think about it is as a kind of franchise. In the samewaymost fast-food franchises are individually owned and runbusinesses, eachwith their own staff, costs, management, etc., they all license the company brand from the franchisor, and they pay for the privilege. Of course, corporate makes sure that the brand is treated consistently by all its franchisees, so that a franchise inMoscowwill deliver an experience consistent with the one in Minnesota, and the franchisees have to adhere to these rules when they sign on. The franchisees also get access to company suppliers. On a different scale, that’s exactly what is happening here – theMMGG is theequivalent of the local company management, and “Bodog” the licensing group is the equivalent of the franchisor.Wehold theexclusive “Bodog” franchise for this market, Bodog Europe owns it for theirmarket, and theHaydock groupwill own it forAsia. You recently regained thebodog.com domain. What impact will this have onMMGG’sbusinessplans? Just to be precise, itwasn’t really a “re-acquisition,” because the MMGG never owned these domains. We originally had access to the domains under the terms of the brand license agreement as one of the elements that we licensed. We do own them now, though. Beyond the migration of the site from www.bodoglife.com to www.bodog.com , I’m not sure the acquisition of the do- mainswill havea concrete im- pact on the product offerings per se.However, itwill signifi- cantly impactmarketing strat- egy and it has, as you point out, changed theway the oth- er brand licenseeswillmarket and interactwithoneanother. Though our businesses are all separate and our licensing agreements essentially limit each licensee’s branded busi- ness to specific territories, the world–particularly fordigital companies – is a very small and connectedplace. So,whatwehaveagreedtowith Bodog and with the European and Asian gaming brand licenseesisthatBodog.comwill beredirectedtotheappropriate licensee Web site depending onwhere the visitor is located. The geolocation technology to do this reliably is now quite excellent. The benefit of this, of course, is that every brand licensee can now advertise the same domain name, so marketing or adverting that “spillsover”fromone licensee’s territory into another actually benefits everyone and no market confusion results. This reinforces a single, unified brand and also gives the licensees the option of sharing creative assets or even campaign concepts from region to region asappropriate. We’re already seeing a significant uptake in searchvalue for thisdomain, andwhile it’s difficult to quantify, the impact that this has had on staff morale has been pretty remarkable. And affiliates have been calling every day. The business of theMMGG, and I’m told the business of Bodog Europe as well, has been getting tremendous traction and almost every metric is moving in the right direction. The acquisition of the domains and the “return” of the Bodog experience to its rightful home has got everyone firing on all cylinders and extremely excited about the future. For our customers, we hope they sense this renewed enthusiasm and enjoy the benefits as the products and the experience just keep getting better and :: GPWA Times Bodog shooting for the stars 41